


A Gift of Mud and Flowers

by Inquartata (mackillian)



Series: Tessera [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Back When Things Were Pretty Okay, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Prompt Fic, Well Before Everything Went to Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:12:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mackillian/pseuds/Inquartata
Summary: Indah will never cease to be surprised by her recklessly thoughtful daughter.





	A Gift of Mud and Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Fictober Prompt Fic For:
> 
> 5\. “Take what you need.”  
> 24\. “You know this. You know this to be true.”  
> 25\. “Go forward, do not stray.”  
> 26\. “But if you cannot see it, is it really there?”  
> 27\. “Remember, you have to remember.”

**Armali, 1892.**

When Thaia voluntarily trooped into the kitchen after merely an hour outside, Indah assumed it was another scraped knee or elbow. At ten years old and having already collected an undue amount of scrapes, Thaia was perfectly capable of tending to the injury provided it wasn’t excessively large or deep.

Indah didn’t even look up as she pushed the first aid kit across the counter of the kitchen island. “Take what you need.”

Sometime in recent months, Thaia had grown tall enough that now her eyes were above the counter when she stood next to it, which made it easier for Indah to verify that there weren’t any tears—Thaia tended to find injuries inconvenient rather than upsetting unless they were severe enough to require stoppage of play for the rest of the day or longer—as Thaia opened the kit. There were none and so Indah returned to reviewing completed assignments from her students on her terminal.

When, from the corner of her eye, Indah noticed how _much_ gauze her daughter had taken from the kit, she decided it would be best to investigate. Then she looked over at Thaia, who sat on a chair at the table, brow drawn down in concentration as she dabbed a medigel-infused cleaning cloth over a scrape that stretched from knee to ankle. The thin, non-stick gauze rested haphazardly upon it, already near to saturated with violet blood.

Goddess, this reckless child of hers would be the death of her. “I think you might need help.”

Thaia scowled. “It takes longer when you do it.”

“You have somewhere pressing to be?”

“Outside,” Thaia said as if it were obvious. “We have to leave in three days and I don’t want to spend them in here.”

Indah didn’t look forward to their departure. Like her daughter, she also preferred living by the bay, but the realities of daily life demanded they live in the city for the majority of the year. Yet, Indah’s predictable disappointment at leaving wasn’t remotely close to the desolation her daughter experienced whenever they left. Thaia would undoubtedly be inconsolable for the majority of their return trip to Armali. The more that spectre loomed, the more adamant she became about staying outside, even past sunset. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon that Indah would be forced to either physically or biotically carry her daughter indoors over her impassioned protests in the last few days—a ritual that had resumed the night prior.

“She says as if she doesn’t already attempt to live outdoors every minute of every day,” Indah said, the fortunate narrator for the story of her daughter’s life.

It transformed Thaia’s scowl into an exasperated smile. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“I am.” Indah packed up the kit and placed it in Thaia’s hands. “You hold this. We need to rinse your leg off in the tub before we can even think about the next step.” Then she gathered Thaia in her arms and headed for the bathroom.

After she’d washed out the abrasion covering Thaia’s entire shin and moved onto medigel salve and a transparent film dressing, Thaia still hadn’t confessed to how she’d scraped herself so badly. 

Indah ventured her question. “How did this happen?”

Though Thaia’s innate honesty led to complete recountings of her adventures, hearing them was nothing short of heart-stopping. “I was trying to get to the inlet without going through the cave, so I tried the ledge on the cliff on the bay side, but the ledge disappeared sooner than I thought.” Thaia rummaged through the open first aid kit next to her and said not a whit more.

Which forced Indah into prompting her. “And?” 

“And… the rocks are slippery.”

Goddess above, Thaia could have gotten herself killed merely to avoid some largely harmless arachnids. Indah swallowed her sigh and her frustration with it—she didn’t want to discourage Thaia’s honesty, and Indah well knew her frustration was more to do with the unbearable thought of losing her daughter.

The dressing set, Indah stood and checked it over before she informed Thaia of the natural consequences of her actions. “Unless you want to faint from the pain—which I assure you that you do not—you’ll need to wait until morning to go swimming again.”

There went the bottom lip to quivering and eyes the color of a Thessian ocean’s tempest shimmered with threatened and understandable tears. Maybe if it had been closer to the middle of their time at the bay, Indah would have left Thaia to fully experience the consequences of her wanton disregard for her personal safety, but they would be leaving in three days. Losing the better part of one seemed overly harsh. “However, I haven’t done my rowing yet today. If you’d like to, you can come out with me in the skiff. But,” she said as she helped Thaia stand up and test out her leg, “you’ll need to sit still. Then, afterward, you and I will return to the cave and I’ll help you learn get through to the inlet on your own.”

Thaia beamed and promised to cooperate.

On the skiff, she did. The ocean soothed her, its simple presence around them granting her a tranquility she never seemed to fully attain when ashore. On the sea, Thaia’s perpetual motion slowed and often stopped, content to watch the world pass her by instead of the other way around.

On land, looking into the gossamer light inside the cave, Thaia did _not_ cooperate.

“Remember,” Indah told Thaia yet again as she crouched beside her, “you have to remember to stay calm.”

Thaia slowly turned to look at her, completely incredulous. “Mother, do you _really_ think that’s reassuring?”

“Its simplicity should be. Remain calm. Then go forward and do not stray.”

“That’s even less reassuring. And how am I supposed to remain calm when those arachnids are all right there? Beside me and above me and maybe behind me and—”

Before her daughter could get herself worked up—Thaia’s anxiety, like her imagination, had to tendency to get away from her—Indah put her arm over Thaia’s shoulders and pulled her close. “You will be fine. Keep your eyes on the exit the entire time and you won’t even see one. And if you cannot see it, is it really there?”

Thaia waved an arm at the cave. “It’s definitely there if it jumps on you.” She gasped. “What if it jumps on my face?”

Indah sighed.

On her part, Thaia wholeheartedly escalated her fear. “What if it jumps on _your_ face? How will you protect me, then?”

Indah sighed again.

Thaia frowned at her, pointing an accusatory finger. “And _you_ said that even though I can’t see Parnitha at night that _it’s_ still there, so wouldn’t the same go for the arachnids?”

While Indah truly appreciated her child’s intellect, there were moments when she wished Thaia’s interests ran toward language arts. Many moments, moments such as this one, where Indah ended up simultaneously proud, exasperated, and forcefully reminded of her daughter’s father. Thaia’s innate curiosity for how things worked and the scientific precepts and mathematical concepts behind them was every centimeter a trait inherited from Sula. And, like Thaia’s eye color, the reminder carried remembrance, regret, and reassurance.

Eventually, Indah and Thaia made it through the cave, though Indah despaired that her daughter wouldn’t ever be able to traverse the cave alone. Not unless Thaia went in after her biotics manifested and wreaked havoc.

Which stood as a possibility.

After they returned, Thaia initially accompanied Indah in putting away the skiff before traipsing off to explore. 

It happened, as if often did, when Thaia was out of sight, yet supposedly safely within earshot. Except, with Thaia, things such as _safe_ , _safely_ , and _safety_ were either nebulous concepts or defined challenges, both options paying no heed to the denotations of the words.

There was a shout from above followed by the rush of tumbling rocks down the steep slope north of the house. Indah ran from the boathouse, feet churning the rain-damp soil to mud when she cut right. She arrived the foot of the hill just as Thaia, arms and legs flailing, landed in the muddy channel at the bottom with a splat.

“Thaia!” When her normally loud daughter didn’t speak or move, Indah’s chest burned with her struggle to breathe, lines of cold racing along her limbs as she raced to reach her. 

Then the exhaustion of relief ripped away the cold when Thaia slowly stood up on wobbly feet, brow furrowed in dismay. She was utterly filthy—thick, dark mud caked her back, legs, and arms; her crest was a patchwork of grass stains; the right sleeve of her shirt torn and hanging on by a literal thread. When Thaia tried to wipe the mud from her face, it streaked across her cheeks, mottled lines of brown over steel blue skin, a miniature camouflaged commando—an absurd idea, given Thaia’s inability to slow down and watch where she was going.

Something she hadn’t done yet _again_ , and Indah’s heart still hammered from the terrifying outcomes she’d imagined in that eternal quiet between Thaia landing and rising.

“Gross,” Thaia said when she looked down at herself.

Drops of mud spattered from the momentum of Indah’s feet as she skidded to a stop in front of her daughter. “Althaia, what were you _thinking_?” 

Her blue eyes starkly vivid under the streaks of mud, teeth gritting as she bit down on whatever explanation she had, Thaia looked up at her.

The harsh heat of worry torched Indah’s torrent of statements. “Look at you! You’ve ripped—no, _shredded_ —your shirt! You’re covered in mud! And your crest! It has so many grass stains you might as well have painted it green! What, under the light of Athame, were you _thinking_?”

Thaia’s jaw flexed in a failed attempt to stop her chin from quivering. Then it took her several tries to ask in a voice that was so painfully small, “Why do you love clean clothes more than me?”

Indah’s upset abandoned her. Not again. Not _again._ But she knew the truth of the matter—she _had_ done it again, let her relieved worry control what she said and thus give her daughter the wrong idea about how her own mother felt. “I don’t,” Indah said, pressing on with the urgency the truth deserved. “I love you more than I ever could anything else in existence. You _know_ this. You know this to be true.”

“But I don’t,” Thaia whispered, but then found her voice, flinging it out as she mirrored it with a brief gesture of her arms. “You were talking about my _shirt_ and the _mud_ and the _grass stains_ like those are more important!”

“Because,” Indah said as she crouched to Thaia’s eye level, “because the tear in your shirt could have been a laceration the length of your entire arm. The grass stains on your crest could have been a fractured skull. The mud you landed in could have been solid rock. Had it been, I don’t want to even think about the ways in which it would have broken your body. All those things together tell me that you might have been seriously injured, which is the last thing I want because I love you.”

“Oh.” Thaia’s shoulders relaxed as she looked behind her, at the steep cliff of the headland abutting the bay and then turned back around to gaze at the hill stretching upward behind her mother. “I didn’t think about those things.”

Indah sighed. “You rarely do.” But she was grateful for Thaia having once again emerged on the opposite side of an ill-fated adventure relatively unharmed. After Indah reestablished eye contact, she gently asked, “What were you doing up there?”

Thaia lifted her hand. Clutched in her small fist was an assortment of wildflowers, stems bent, petals bruised and flecked with mud, but somehow she’d held onto them through her entire fall. “You helped me get past the arachnids,” Thaia said, and then the rest of her answer burst out without a pause to breathe. “And I wanted to say thank you and I saw these up there and I got them because they’re in one of your poems.” Her nose scrunched as she thought it over. “I think the poem said they’re your favorite.” She thrust the hand holding the flowers toward Indah. “Here.”

Indah’s throat went dry. Here in full was the enigma of her daughter—impulsive and inexplicable on the surface, yet well-intentioned beneath. Dispensing small, solicitous gestures of love without warning, which revealed that she paid far more attention to others than her blithe bearing implied.

She accepted the flowers and then gathered Thaia into her arms, untroubled by the mud when Thaia wrapped her arms around her neck and leaned all her weight against her. Indah pressed her cheek against her daughter’s crest and inhaled. She smelled of grass and earth, this child of hers, when normally she smelled of the sea.

Well, that was easily enough righted. Free hand on Thaia’s left shoulder, Indah leaned back to see her muddy face. “After we wash you up, how about we go for another row in the bay, Waterbug?”

Thaia gave her a radiant grin and then took off in a tear toward the house. Halfway there, she tripped over a root and went sprawling. But she bounced to her feet and flew off before Indah could ask to the well being of the daughter who refused to be daunted. 

Later, after they’d returned from the sea and Thaia had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Indah pressed the wildflowers between the pages of a bound copy of her latest poetry collection. A new poem about daughters and the gifts they gave joined the flowers shortly thereafter, and then she placed the book in a stasis drawer with other cherished mementos and the memories they carried. When Thaia had her own daughter, Indah would bring it out again to show her what marvelous lessons awaited.


End file.
